I am very grateful to have the insurance I do. Believe it or not, the city even pays 90% of Pat's coverage. When I started it paid everything for both of us. Granted that we have to pay our own dental and vision, but those don't amount to a lot per paycheck.

This is the first job I've had with benefits like this (apart from the Army). I go to the doctor pretty much of my choice, I don't need a referral for a specialist, and my co-pay is $20 per visit. Medicines are $20 or $10 co-pay, depending upon whether or not it's generic, and I can get up to 100 days supply at one time.

Yeah, I got it good. I ain't complainin', believe me. I just think of those who aren't as lucky and, well...something has to be done.

You're lucky to have insurance. A dear friend who died last summer had been jerked around for several years by the county as he waited for a hip replacement. He had arthritis and was injured about five years ago, and was no longer able to afford his insurance. I know that between inadequate health care and the slowness of the public charity system he probably lost 30-40 years (he was 47).

Yes, I suspect they will cut my knee open and Do Something In There. Probably take out parts of my body. They're doing that, you know. Tooth extractions, colon polyps -- you see, there's Secret Government Organization which is trying to clone me because genetic perfection is desired. They take bits and pieces so they have enough of my genetic material to insure success.

Well, that's half the question answered anyway. Good job, thanks. I really wish you a successful visit to the doc. If you need a damn titanium nee because you have kiboshed your patella, get 'er done in all due haste sez me!!

My left knee is painful and swollen. It sort of crunches when I walk and I'm walking with a hiking stick for extra support. I cannot raise my lower leg very high, it's painful getting up out of a sitting position, and I cannot (at the moment) play my trumpet with my toes.

I'm going to the doctor at 11 a.m. tomorrow and to an orthpod at 2:50 p.m. tomorrow. I hope to know more about the problem then, at least more than I do now, which is that my left knee is painful and swollen, etc.

I have to go visit the Mayor in 90 minutes. That qualifies as sitting with a loony, doesn't it? HE wasn't at the Conference yesterday so HE doesn't know about feedback. That makes me smarter than him. I'm also smarter than he is because I'm not a politician.

Oh, Mom! I'm so sorry, but I had to attend a Leadership Conference on getting and giving feedback all afternoon at City Hall. And so I found you near the bottom. I'll do my best, I will, but Amos has to take some responsibility around here.

In the meantime, I learned about feedback. That's when you go out and feed the chickens, and some hours later you get your feed back.

I hate when midday comes around, And finds our Mom full half-way down. It makes me fret, I do confess, About our standard of BS! If our BS were pure and fine, "twould penetrate the Mudcat mind And every Mudcat name or ghost Would come to read, and, often, post. But 'tis not so! No, 't is not so! She drifts adown, and well below The middle mark of the lower half, Hoping some soul will read and laugh. I urge you, MOAB sons and daughters, To save her when she starts to totter, And seek to better your alignment, Your nuance, quip and pure refinement That we might welcome one and all Into these hallowed BS halls.

My sympathies, from a fellow-sufferer. Is unrequired reading as harsh a fate, say, as unrequited love? I would think it might be, especially for a solipsist who is uncompromisingly engaged int he pursuit of self-realization in all manifestations of everyone.

Should we bemoan our respective fates as Unrequired Reading? Perhaps not. It is possible that only voluntary reading can elicit genuine, emotional, mental and spiritual responser ont he part of the Reader.

I broke mine back in college, writing an epic pome I called "Beowulf" -- maybe you heard of it. Anyway, it got set wrong and now I write iambs in trochaic tetrameter and Alexandrines as blank verse. Here's an example of what I mean by the latter:

See? And the doctors say it can't be fixed without affecting my Metricali Rose bone.

And now to get (at last) some kicks Hears triple-two and ten times six!! Come forth, ye bells and trumpets loud, And spread the news (of which I'm proud) That by quick action, lickety-splixty I've posted 222 and sicty!!

As we are well past 22K, dear sir, you will appreciate that any posts numbered e (whose numerical value truncated to 20 decimal places is: 2.71828 18284 59045 23536...) or ¹ (3.1514...) are far behind on our dusty trail, but please feel free to go back and grab them, and none will contest you. Likewise the square root of -1, whose friends call him i is somewhere back in the historical mists of our early beginnings. But I urge you to be careful in your claimancy, here, since it may be the case that ALL our numbers are imaginary, this being the MOAB and all.

As for ° +1, do be patient and it shall be yours as soon as we reach it.

An olde gem attributed to various English-speaking school systems, but still worth a grin:

Every year, English teachers from across the USA can submit their collections of actual analogies and metaphors found in high school essays. These excerpts are published each year to the amusement of teachers across the country. Here are last year's winners:

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli, and he was room temperature Canadian beef.

5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.

8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.

9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.

11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30

12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.

16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River .

18. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.

19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.

20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

23. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.

25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

That's...that's alright. I'm used to it. Kicked around, rejected everywhere, why just the other night up at the Legion Hovel I was playing cards and just knew that my straight flush (Queen down) was the winning hand. I bet the farm on it, even my pants. And I was right! My flush would have won if we hadn't been playing Uno at the time. Fortunately, the other guys let me keep my pants for they knew what my wife would say if I came home pantsless...pantless...sans culottes. So I'm used to it. I'd go jump into the river and drown if it wasn't frozen and I'm probably break my ankles or at least sprain them instead. And in the summer when it's not frozen it's only a couple inches deep.

Thank you for your recent shipment of Idaho snow. I am sorry to say the quality control on your product was well below standard. Don't you people even know how to make reliable snow? Your shipment was entirely unable to withstand the rigprs of the targeted environment here, even in the first day of deployment. As a result it suffered a complete meltdown, and ended up running down the streets and into the flower beds completely beyond control. Your logistics system, which we asked to deliver the snow to Lake Hodges reservoir, ended up sprinkling the faulty product over half the county. As a result we received none of the expected benefits of a large snowfall. None of our citizenry are getting to shovel anything, no-one is freezing, no snowblowers have been purchased, the market in wide-bladed shovels continues to be dormant, no snowmen decorate our green lawns, and my little sister has not been pummeled with a single slushball.

I am sorry to say we cannot consider this a fulfillment of contract on your part and would request that you cancel the delivery order; Idaho needs to go back to the drawing board as far as snow is concerned, and work up a more robust design before it again enters the export market.

Ah, but there are hoseurs, LH, as surely as there are voyageurs, explorateurs, or even travailleurs. I am speaking to one even as I write! Do you think I am how you say delusionaire? Fie!! C'est un canard enorme.

Ah, yes, Goody Two-Shoes. She was one of the lights of Plymouth, Mass, wasn't she, back in the old days?

There are no "hoseurs", Amos! LOL! It's just unthinkable. It would be a contradiction in terms. I think you are referring, sir, to "tabernacs". A tabernac is the French Canadian equivalent of a hoser, but a tabernac is never a "hoseur".

Oh Johnny, get a life, fer Pete's Sake. I was stringing you along anyway. You are such a goody two shoes, and, really, no fun at all.

I had a much better time going to dinner with Dani and splitting a bottle of bubbly to celebrate my pending elevation from the cesspool to the basement of financial security (Mastercard and Visa will again be pleased), than I would have had with you anyway.

I only regret that we drove to town instead of walked. Then we could have finished the evening at the Blue Bayou, listening to Cool John Ferguson